Category Archives: Vancouver52

Jambo Grill & Good Morning Paan

Posted on December 7, 2010 by | 1 Comment

potato puffs
Vancouver World Tour > Africa > Uganda.

With all the busyness of trying to get everything done before having knee surgery, I was finding it hard to get to any of the farther afield African restaurants on my list, but I was looking forward to Jambo Grill & Good Morning Paan. Jambo is a Swahili word meaning ‘hello’ and paan is an Indian dish, a betel leaf filled with sweets and nuts and with all the multi-ethnic welcoming, I was expecting deliciousness.

Like Simba’s the menu here is a mix of Indian and East African. The menu explains:

The dishes at Jambo Grill and Khoja style, which is quite different from other Indian style dishes. Khoja’s followers of the Ismaili Branch of Shia sect of Islam, our forefathers in India, were converted to Islam by the Dais from Iran. Thus, there is a strong Persian and Gujarati influence evident in our cooking…Around the 1920′s the Khoja settled in large numbers in East Africa before immigrating to Canada in the 1970′s. Certain African style dishes such as Cassava and Tilapia Fish are influences from that continent. Also cooking on the grill (Sigdi) was very common in East Africa.

I was seated with four menus, presumably to cover off this range of cuisines and when I had finally settled on the bateda wada – spiced mashed potatoes battered and fried – and the mishkaki, spiced and grilled steak, I waited. I was a long way from work for lunch, so somewhat worried about time, but it seemed impossible to catch the waitress’ eye. She was busy with another table, then busy wandering around the restaurant, then just missing. Finally I ordered.

The potato balls, when they arrived, were dry but luckily there was an array of sauces on the table; ambli tamarind sauce, pili pili hot sauce and moto moto chili sauce, that got slathered on everything.

meat and potatoes

I read a magazine then got up to go to the bathroom. When I got back to my table, my steak was sitting there, getting cold. I was disappointed that she hadn’t bothered to put it under a heat lamp for a few minutes until I got back, but there was no telling her that – she was MIA for the rest of the meal, save for a surly water refill. When I wanted to pay, I had to get up and stand at the cash register. Luckily? It was the owner who came to help but when he inquired about the experience and I told him about the terrible service, he hauled the waitress over and reprimanded her in front of me. Her indignant, “what?!” shouted in the restaurant mirrored the shock and incredulity on mine.

Service aside, the flavours are interesting and complex. I like the combination of tamarind and fennel seed with chilies, especially in beef, but everything was so dry.  Simba’s has similar fare and is a much better experience, in my opinion.

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Jambo Grill & Good Morning Paan
3219 Kingsway, Vancouver

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Simba’s African Grill

Posted on October 5, 2010 by | 2 Comments

cassava
Vancouver World Tour > Africa > East Africa.

I’d heard decent things about Simba’s Grill over the years, but never enough to get it high enough on my list. I almost made it there during Meat-on-a-Stick week but then it slipped under the radar again until last week when I managed to convince my partner to go on a longish walk to the West End to eat some African food. “What’s it going to be like?” he asked. “Skewers, I think” was my response. And so we set out, not expecting much.

goat curry

Expectations were not raised when the owner came over and gruffly asked if we had any questions. I didn’t have any specific ones, other than I wanted some recommendations. The menu is divided into barbecue (on skewers, ha!) and curry. The curry (and the naan, and the chutneys) have a decidedly Indian influence that I need to learn more about, with familiar ingredients but unrecognizable names. We ended up with the goat curry in brown sauce (mbuzi muchuzi) and barbecued ostrich (mbuni).

ugali

Before they arrived though, we got a complementary plate of fried cassava sprinkled with chilies. The table already held a set of coconut chutney, yogurt and tamarind sauce and the cassava was accompanied by homemade pili-pili hot sauce and mango hot sauce, so there were plenty of flavours to be sampled. Several of them were unapologetically (and deliciously) spicy but we had a large Tusker beer from Kenya to quell the heat.

The mango hot sauce had an exquisite flavour, both sweet and spicy, that I started dabbing on the cassava with the coconut chutney but by the end of the meal I had poured out the rest of each on various parts of the meal. The pili-pili was more heat than flavour but gave the cassava and ugali (cornmeal made from maize) a good kick whereas the tamarind sauce was dark and sultry and sticky.

The ostrich came with saffron rice so fragrant that I held the plate to my face before I even tasted anything. Then I tasted the rice, even before the meat. Then I sliced open a chunk of ostrich and it was medium rare and a beautiful dark wine colour. It tasted rich and decadent, while still being quite lean meat. Astonishingly, it got even better with a little dab of the mango hot sauce.

From the first bite we started in with “Mmmm!” and “Try this!” and it didn’t stop until we were walking home, doggie-bag in hand. By the time we switched plates, half-way through the mean I had already uttered, “wow” several times – something that rarely happens anymore. The goat curry provoked more wows; I dunked spoonfuls of the soft ugali in the sauce and spooned up mouthfuls of flavour. It was different than an Indian curry, there was more heat and more going on in the background with cloves and cinnamon. There were also bones, some of them small and barely noticeable in the thick sauce, so be careful.

The decor is pure African kitsch, from lion’s mane wall sconces to saucières with embossed lions on them and plates that would not be out of place in the Fantasyland Hotel but who cares? The food is delicious, the portions are huge and the walk home along the water (at least for us) is incomparable. We’ll be back soon.

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Simba’s Grill
825 Denman Street, Vancouver

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Carthage Cafe

Posted on September 24, 2010 by | 5 Comments

carthago mussels
Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Africa > Tunisia.

In amongst the East Van Ethiopian lurks a lone Tunisian restaurant – Carthage Cafe. The Ethnic Food Lover’s Companion tells us that “North African dining resembles Ethiopian in that bread is the only utensil” but North Africa has been involved in Mediterranean trade since Carthage was a busy port and the cuisine has been borrowed from many cultures.

merguez, chicken, lamb and couscous

At lunch Matt honed in on the combo dish of house-made merguez sausage, lamb, and chicken with couscous and vegetables and I ordered the ‘Carthago’ mussels – Mediterranean mussels grown locally in Horseshoe Bay – spiced with cumin and harissa and served with delicious, hand-cut fries.

I had been to Carthage Cafe a while ago, back before they had a liquor license, so I wasn’t surprised to find some changes when I went back to check it out for Ethnic Eats. A trendy bistro feel – dark walls and Paris-themed art – made it feel like we were going to have to come again for an evening visit.

carthage cafe

And when the food came we amended the plan to include several more people, or perhaps a St. Bernard. The portions were huge! Fat mussels in their dark shells created an elaborately stacked structure dripping with chili oil and flanked by a plate of French fries and a finger bowl. On Matt’s end, there was a heaping platter of meat – a lamb leg, a chicken leg and a mess of sausages – on top of savoury, saucy couscous and some roasted vegetables. This was after we had incautiously filled up on soft French bread and butter.

We were so full we had crackers and cheese for dinner, but it was satisfying. Matt didn’t use a knife for his entire meal, all of it tender and the meat just falling off the bone while I languidly dipped fries in the gravy boat of homemade harissa long after I thought I couldn’t have another bite.

There are a couple of dishes I’d like to check out (not to mention the wine list) so I’ll be back soon, but in the meantime I am going to ponder the French bistro-Tunisian restaurant-African eatery continuum some more.

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Carthage Cafe
1851 Commercial Drive, Vancouver

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Fassil Ethiopian

Posted on September 16, 2010 by | 1 Comment

fassil
Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Africa > Ethiopia.

We’ve been to Fassil Ethiopian before. Several times in fact. But it’s my favorite and it’s been a while and Matt hadn’t tried Ethiopian yet, so off we went on a lunch date.

I’ve never been for Ethiopian with only two people and I was almost apoplectic with what to order. Would it be the vegetarian combo with derek tibs (chunks of fried, spiced lamb) or the doro wat (chicken stew)? There just weren’t enough of us to get a full sampling and so we ordered the Fassil Combo with kitfo. One of my favorite dishes, kitfo is rare beef spiced with chili powder and tastes well enough on its own but takes on a whole new level of flavour when paired with the mild, white cheese that seems to me must be goat.

Ethiopian food is generally served up in stews, called wats, or sauteed in tibs on a “plate” of injera, the flat, spongy, sometimes slightly purple iron-filled bread that is the Ethiopian staple. It can be spicy in some cases, or mild. The Fassil combo comes with smaller portions of alicha (curried vegetable stew), keye wot (cubed stew beef), misr wot (lentils) and kik wot (split peas) so it’s a good cross-section of textures and flavours.

You eat Ethiopian food with your hands, so make sure they’re washed. Then, you rip off a piece of an injera roll, wrap some stew or meat up in it and put it in your mouth. When you’re out of the rolls on the plate, your host may bring you some more (customary at Fassil at least) or you can start ripping up the plate. It may have absorbed some of the oil from the stews, which makes it all the more tasty, if not a little messy. Traditionalists will try eating “gursha“, a technique where you feed your dining companion as a gesture of intimacy and respect.

I’ve eaten at most of Vancouver’s Ethiopian restaurants and while there are a couple more good ones (I would go back to both Harambe and Red Sea Cafe), I always end up back at Fassil. The hospitality and service are kind and the food it excellent.

I wrote this about Fassil’s injera the last time I reviewed it and it still holds true:

Their is soft and fresh and handmade on the premises. This is a process, we learned, that is fairly simple, but takes 3 days for the dough to rise properly and a seemingly large amount of pans, since the injera has to be cooled separately from each other to keep from sticking. Like everything else these days, the chef told us there is apparently “instant injera” available, but at Fassil it’s homemade and it did taste heavenly. Perfectly spongy and slightly sour, it’s much more than a conduit for the wats.

Just be warned, there is a lot of it. I was wishing hard for a couple of extra bodies after we were politely scolded for not finishing our lunch. Either that or a take-out container.

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Fassil Ethiopian
5 – 736 East Broadway, Vancouver

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Bolivian Torrejas and Peanut Soup

Posted on September 7, 2010 by | Leave a comment

Bolivian fare
After working my way through Vancouver’s South American restaurants, I wanted to try my hand at cooking some of the dishes, so my friend sent me some Bolivian recipes from his wife. Peanut soup and torrejas, a fried rice and cheese pancake with some roasted meats made an interesting and excellent meal. Here are the recipes:

Peanut Soup

Ingredients:
1 cup raw shelled peanuts
1 1/2 lb soup bones
1/2 cup fine chopped onions
1 small turnip (shredded)
one stalk fine chopped celery
1/4 cup fine chopped parsley
2 or 3 large carrots peeled and cut into 2 or 3″ sticks
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 cloves minced garlic
Salt and pepper, to taste
Two potatoes peeled and quartered
2/3 to 1 cup rice
Soup makings

Put the peanuts in a small pot with water that covers them. Let them boil for 2 minutes, then cool off a little but not too cool because you squeeze the peeling off them and if it’s too cold it’s harder.
Peanuts

Put the mix in a blender with enough water to cover the peanuts, or “maybe a little more”. Liquefy the peanuts and set aside.Put about 3 quarts of water in a large pot. “make sure at least 1/2 of the pot is empty”. Bring the water to a boil.

Add one and one half pound of soup bones, preferably bones with a good amount of meat (you can cut the meat off when it’s done and serve the soup with meat).
Soup veggies
Boil the meat for 10 minutes, then add onions, turnip, celery, parsley, carrots, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper and the liquefied peanuts. Be on top of this because this soup wants to boil over. Do not cover. Stir often.

Cook for maybe 20 minutes.

Add potatoes and rice. The amount of rice you add will determine how thick the soup ends up. The exact thickness is a bit of an art.

Cook for 15-20 minutes until the rice is done.

Torrejas and beets

Torrejas (tor RAY has)

Ingredients:
2 cups rice (“leftover rice doesn’t work”)
1 large carrot, shredded
5 or 6 green onions
1/2 cup shredded cheese (any good melting cheese. We use cheddar)
1 egg
Salt and pepper, to taste
1-1 1/2 teaspoon crushed oregano
Flour, as needed.

Cook rice and set aside. In a bowl beat one egg and add 2/3 cup of water.

Add salt and pepper and flour until the mixture is slightly thicker than waffle batter (pretty thick). Set aside
Rice torrejas
Mix the veggies and cheese into the rice while the rice is still fairly hot. Then mix the batter with the rice concoction. The batter/rice/veggie mix should be very thick and sticky.

Heat oil in a pan 1/4 inch deep.

Spoon the torreja batter into the oil using a tablespoon or soup spoon and smash it down a little. Brown them on both sides. Maggie makes them about 3 inches in diameter. They will look like thick cookies. You can cook them crispy or chewy. I prefer chewy. Maggie puts them on their side in a cake pan with paper towels in the bottom when they’re done…You’ll have a bunch.

We eat them with fresh cooked beets and put salsa on them. Maggie also eats them with baked potato.

Variations:

Instead of rice you can use the same amount of quinoa OR one head of chopped leaf type lettuce. if you use lettuce you will have to add a bit more flour when you mix because the lettuce has water in it. Lettuce torrejas are my fave but we usually eat rice because it’s a lot of work and the work is multiplied when you make different types for the same meal.

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African Breese Biltong

Posted on August 30, 2010 by | 3 Comments

biltong
Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Africa > South Africa.

Vancouver has a pretty decent selection of East African restaurants (which I will certainly get to telling you about now that we’re touring though Africa), but Matt and I went on a road trip to Pemberton last weekend which just happened to take us past African Breese Imports in North Vancouver. African Breese, a South African import shop, specializes in all things South African including soap, BBQ sauce, candy and Rooiboos tea. Labels are often in English and Afrikaans and even with familiar brands like Cadbury chocolates, the products are utterly foreign. We walked around in awe at all the wonders but we were here for the meat.
Biltong

Biltong is a cured meat, a softer kind of jerky, made with beef and pork and sometimes ostrich and other meat (my Oxford Companion to Food suggests zebra). It’s spiced with coriander seeds, cut into strips and dried for days, at which point it becomes preserved and perfect for storing.  Unlike jerky, however, the meat is still relatively soft and the fat hasn’t been removed, which makes it much more palatable in my opinion. The biltong at African Breese has been on my list since it appeared on Vancouver Magazine’s List of things to taste before you die, but I didn’t realize there were so many kinds! Traditional, hunter and spicy blends filled the display case, along with some ”chili bites” and droëwors sausage, also in several flavours. Chili bites looked to be smaller, dryer slices of meat than the biltong, whereas droëwors are long, slender pieces of meat, similar to a peperoni stick or dry sausage. We didn’t try the chili bites but we got one each of karoo, traditional and spicy droëwors and a bag each of hunter and spicy biltong.

I thought I would like the spicy biltong best, but the hunter is complex and sophisticated and I couldn’t stop eating it (although that may have just been the salt). Coriander seed, fennel and sugar play against each other to be sweet-savoury-salty and we were sold. The salt and black pepper flavours linger on the palate. Matt describes it as being “very ‘meaty’ – more so than most jerky – without being offensive or overwhelming”. The spicy variety is similar in flavour to the hunter, but with a nice initial bite of heat sits somewhat separate from the rest of the flavours.

The droëwors were gone too fast to take specific tasting notes, but they were similar in flavour to the biltong while being an even more interesting texture. They are made from thin boerwors (farmers’) sausage but I could have sworn that they were hand-rolled. Lumpy sticks of beef and pork meat wrapped in a dry casing with pockets of both air and fat, each bite was different. And delicious. The karoo was my favorite and differed subtly in spices from the traditional. They are the perfect meat for a journey and although they were designed for quite a different sort of journey, they were no less enjoyed on the Sea to Sky.

Bitter Lemon

All that dried meat called for some liquid, so we had also got some water, ginger beer and this delightful bitter lemon soda (with quinine!) to wash it down. I am in love with this drink and will probably be drinking it for the rest of summer, hopefully with a stick of karoo in the other hand.

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African Breese Imports
1054 Marine Drive, North Vancouver

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Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants: Americas

Posted on August 13, 2010 by | 5 Comments

Photo Credit: ecstaticist.

Well, I’ve made a bit of a dent in my project to review Vancouver restaurants in a world tour kind of format. The Americas are a big place (comprising North America, South America, Central America and for our purposes the Caribbean as well) with a lot of unsettled history and so regional cuisines and dishes are still constantly evolving.

For example, many of the culinary trends we associate with Europe originated in the New World; “consider the list of foods unknown to Europeans until the sixteenth century; tomatoes, coriander, chilies, cocoa, avocados, bananas, beans, pine nuts, pecans, peanuts, squash and tobacco. What the Europeans did bring was significant – rice and wheat, olives, beef, mutton, goat, pork, almonds, cinnamon and nutmeg, raisin and wine grapes, and Seville oranges and limes.”

With Canada being part of the Americas, this should have been a pretty easy category to fill up, but North American food isn’t typically considered ethnic, except possibly with regards to Cajun/Creole and Southwestern cuisines. As for the rest of the Americas, Vancouver is not overrun with South American or even Mexican restaurants, but here is a sampling of the best.

The Americas (and Caribbean):

1. (French) Canadian: Frenchies

2. American: Modern Burger

3. American round2: Memphis Blues

4. Mexico: La Taqueria

5. Mexico round2: Las Tortas

6. El Salvador: El Rinconcito

7. Central America: El Caracol

8. Peru/Colombia: El Inka Latin Deli

9. South America: Cobre

10. Peru: Mochikas Peruvian Cafe

11. Brazil: Samba

12. Jamaican: Jamaican Pizza Jerk

13. Jamaican: Calabash

14. Cuban: Havana

Please also see the Reef, a Tale of 2 Jerks,  and more Havana.

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Calabash Caribbean

Posted on August 2, 2010 by | 1 Comment

Akee and saltfish

Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Caribbean > Jamaica

Conveniently when I was working my way through Vancouver’s Caribbean restaurants (and hoping I wasn’t going to have to make the trek to Calypso in Surrey or Kingston 11 in North Van), Calabash Bistro opened a block and a half away from me. Yes, sometimes sheer laziness pays off. And also conveniently, they were open one night when I was sweaty and cranky from unpacking boxes and more than happy to plunk a couple of cold ones down in front of me.

I ordered the Ackee and Saltfish, a dish that has intrigued me for some time, simply because of the sheer foreignness of it. What is an ackee? What is a saltfish? All I knew was that it is the national dish of Jamaica. As it turns out, an ackee is a fruit that is so poisonous raw that it can kill if eaten before it ripens. So it needs to be boiled before eating it and it can only be exported in cans. Saltfish is not that interesting. It is, as you might think, another name for salted cod. At Calabash, it’s sauteed with cilantro, spices, peppers and tomatoes and served with rice, peas and fresh greens. It was enough to make me forget the pile of boxes waiting at home for me and slide a little farther into my chair, still clutching the Red Stripe.

They make their own sauces in house, including curry, jerk and Jamaican ketchup. I tried the jerk sauce on a side of fries and was thoroughly convinced to come back for the jerk chicken. Hot and spicy with a world of flavour to back it up, it filled the balance between the beer and the dinner and the hot, muggy evening. Their menu is small…only a handful of dinner items, but you could stop in several times and not get tired of the variety of flavours.

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Calabash Bistro
428 Carrall Street, Vancouver

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Jamaican Pizza Jerk Isn’t About the Pizza

Posted on July 31, 2010 by | 1 Comment

jamaican jerk chicken
Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Americas / Caribbean> Jamaica

When I walked into Jamaica Pizza Jerk at lunchtime, there was only one other table occupied, but warm smiles greeted me all around the vibe was happy and mellow. I’m sure that the Bob Marley concert playing on the television did much to add to the ambiance, as did the colourful Caribbean decor…Even though Jerk Chicken must surely be the national dish, I was after the curry goat. Curry Goat is only available on Tuesdays and Fridays at Jamaican Pizza Jerk, so I ordered the chicken and even though I am not actually a chicken connoisseur, I was thrilled with this dish. Dark meat was very tender being so close to the bone and cooked to perfection. The sauce was thinner than I expected, but rich and flavorful. Rice cooked in coconut milk and spices and a tangy homemade coleslaw accompanied the meat.

Instead of goat, we also ordered cow’s foot. It came with a warning (that it was not to everyone’s taste), and a raised eyebrow but I was determined. When it appeared in front of me, smelling meaty and yes, a little bit barnyard-y, I was still confident in my ordering decision, but at some point midway I realized that I was eating much more rice and hot sauce than the strange, gelatinously textured hoof and I had to concede that maybe yes, this was not particularly to my taste. Luckily there was plenty of Red Stripe to wash it down.

Later I went back and had the goat. It’s toughish, as goat is, but the flavour of the curry is delicious and hot and I could eat it again and again, except I would still want to have the jerk chicken some of the times. And I still need to try the ackee and saltfish. Sigh, one of these days.

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Jamaica Pizza Jerk
2707 Commercial Drive, Vancouver

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Samba: Meaty Madness

Posted on July 29, 2010 by | 1 Comment


Photo credit: Samba

Around Vancouver in 52 Restaurants > Americas > Brazil

A tour of South American restaurants wouldn’t be complete without what is (to my knowledge) the only Brazilian eatery in town, Samba Brazilian Steakhouse. They serve churrascaria de rodizio, Brazilian-style BBQ, in all you can eat meat dinner, complete with costumed waiters and salsa dancers. It’s gimmicky to say the least, but it can be a fun experience. Clearly meat-focused, you have your choice of steak, pork, chicken, ostrich, chicken hearts – and more – proffered at regular intervals on the end of a long serving skewer. There is also a ‘salad’ bar of veggies, prawns, fish, etc.

And then there are the drinks, any number of which come with an umbrella and of which you will no doubt need several of to get past the tourists and teenagers. It can be argued that all restaurants are trying to create an experience for the diner but with ‘theme restaurants’ the experience is what sells the food. If you’re in the mood for a pre-packaged party and a whole lotta meat, Samba may just have what you’re looking for.
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Samba
1122 Alberni Street, Vancouver

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